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grass. I could feel many eyes following me, and they were not amused or pitying or scornful, but curious, admiring, intrigued. It made me feel quite strange.
    I reached up a hand to stroke the long muzzle of a placid gray beast, and the lad who had whistled before appeared at my side. He was a gangling, freckled fellow somewhat older than myself. I had seen him many times with the others, and never exchanged so much as a word. Behind him a couple more boys hovered.
    "His name's Silver." This was offered with diffidence, as if the speaker were not quite sure of his possible reception. There was a pause. Some response from me was clearly expected. It was all very well to maintain the Glamour, to keep myself as this not-quite-myself that they all seemed to want to look at and talk to. My techniques were well up to that. But I must also act in keeping; find the words, the smiles, the little gestures. Find the courage. I slipped a hand into the pocket of my gown, repeated the words of an old spell silently in my head, and drew out a wrinkled apple that had not been there when we left home.
    "Is it all right if I give him this?" I asked sweetly, arching my brows and trying for a shy smile.
    The boy nodded, grinning. Now I had five of them around me, leaning with studied casualness on the wall, or half-hiding behind one another, peering around for a better look without being conspicuous. I put the apple on the palm of my hand, and the horse ate it. His ears were laid back. He was uneasy with me, and I knew why.
    "Is it true you can make fire with your hands?" blurted out one of the lads suddenly.
    "Hush your mouth, Paddy," said the first one with a scowl.
     
    "What are you thinking of, asking the young lady something like that?"
     
    "None of our business, I'm sure," said another, though doubtless he, like all of them, had exchanged his fair share of speculative gossip about what we got up to, those long lonely times in the Honeycomb.
     
    "It's my father who's the sorcerer, not me," I said softly, still stroking the horse's muzzle with delicate fingers. "I'm just a girl."
     
    "Haven't seen you out and about much this summer," commented the freckled boy. "Keeps you busy, does he?"
     
    I gave a nod, allowing my expression to become crestfallen. 'There's only my father and me, you see." I imagined myself as a dutiful daughter, cooking sustaining meals, mending and sweeping and tending to my father, and I could see the same image in their eyes.
     
    "A shame, that," said one of the lads. "You should come down sometimes. There's dancing and games and good times here in the camp. Pity to miss it."
     
    "Maybe—" began the other boy, but I never heard what he was about to say, for it was at that point my father called me, and the lads melted away quicker than spring snow, leaving me alone with the horse. And as I turned to follow my father obediently back home I saw Darragh, over on the far side of the horse lines, brushing down his white pony. Aoife, her name was; he'd argued long and hard with Dan to be allowed to keep her, and he'd had his way in the end. Now Darragh glanced at me and looked away, and not by so much as a twitch of the brow or a movement of the hand did he give me any recognition.
     
    "Very good," my father said as we walked home in the chill of a rising west wind. "Very good indeed. You're getting the feeling of this. However, this is just the beginning. I'd like you to develop a degree of sophistication. You'll need that at Sevenwaters. The folk there are somewhat different from these fishermen and simple travelers. We must begin work on that."
     
    "Yes, Father." For all his words of praise, he seemed tired and sad, as if something weighed on him. I saw a look in his eyes that I recognized well, a look that told me he was planning, calculating, seeing things so far ahead I could not hope to understand. What was it he wanted me to do at Sevenwaters? Was it so dangerous there that I must cloak myself in magic every